AS Featured: Architecture in New York
The Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building is considered a leading example of Art Deco architecture. It is constructed of a steel frame in-filled with masonry, with areas of decorative metal cladding. The structure contains 3,862 exterior windows.
Chrysler Building, office building in New York City, designed by William Van Alen and often cited as the epitome of the Art Deco skyscraper. Its sunburst-patterned stainless steel spire remains one of the most striking features of the Manhattan skyline. Built between 1928 and 1930, the Chrysler Building was briefly the tallest in the world, at 1,046 feet (318.8 metres). It claimed this honor in November 1929—when the building was topped off with a 180-foot (55-metre) spire—and held the record until the Empire State Building opened in 1931. The decorative scheme of the facade and interior is largely geometric; at the request of Walter P. Chrysler, who commissioned the building, stainless steel automobile icons (e.g., radiator caps in the form of Mercury) were incorporated in the frieze on the setback at the base of the tower and in decorative work on other parts of the building. The building’s pierless corners and sleek design are typical of the modernism of the 1920s. A major restoration of the landmark structure was conducted in the early 1980s.
Waldorf Astoria
Unlike many other Chinese cities, Shanghai has a largely European past, given its status as an international trade city. Like Waldorf Astoria, the city is proud of its past while looking toward the future. Thus, Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund comprises two buildings—the first is a 1910 heritage-listed neoclassical structure, formerly the legendary Shanghai Club, and the second is a contemporary tower completed in 2011. Both the new build and the renovation were overseen by John Portman & Associates and HBA/Hirsch Bedner Associates. The new tower provides an updated take on Art Deco style with subtle Chinese details, such as floral-patterned upholstery. To reflect the history, the original structure features colonial-style touches like canopy beds and clawfoot tubs in the Shanghai Club Tower Suite. While the two firms restored the historic building based on archival photographs, rooms offer all the modern amenities that today’s luxury travelers expect.
New York Public Library
In his excellent and definitive book, "The New York Public Library Its Architecture and Decoration, published in 1986 by W. W. Norton & Company, Henry Hope Reed describes this correctly as "an edifice of stunning quality - a people's palace of triumphant glory."
"Astor Hall, at the entrance," Reed continues, "with its unique stone vault above an awesome white marble interior, sets the tone for the architectural delights that lie in store for the visitor. Sumptuous light brackets, elaborately decorated ceilings, the great gallery extending along the north-south axis of the building on the first floor, the window bays, the doorways, the great stairways, all combine to lift the human spirit and dignify man's achievements. The elaborately decorated Main Reading Room, almost two city blocks in length, located at the top of the building for light and quiet, is a fitting climax to all that the architects wished to achieve."
With McKim, Mead & White's demolished Pennsylvania Station and Warren & Wetmore's and Reed & Stem's Grand Central Terminal, the library is one of the most important Beaux-Arts structures ever erected in midtown. It has neither the incredible spaciousness drama of the former or the great location straddling Park Avenue of the latter, but it surpassed both in its consistently lavish decorative detail. The former Custom House at the foot of Broadway and the former Hall of Records building on Chambers Street, both downtown, are far greater Beaux Arts buildings, but much smaller, though still imposing.
Radio City Music Hall
Upon opening its doors for the first time on a rainy winter’s night in 1932, the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan was proclaimed so extraordinarily beautiful as to need no performers at all. The first built component of the massive Rockefeller Center, the Music Hall has been the world’s largest indoor theater for over eighty years. With its elegant Art Deco interiors and complex stage machinery, the theater defied tradition to set a new standard for modern entertainment venues that remains to this day.
Industrialist and noted philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. was approached in 1928 by a group of leading New York citizens seeking to build a new opera house for the Metropolitan Opera Company. Though Rockefeller himself was not particularly concerned with opera, his sense of civic duty and the favorable economic climate of the late 1920s convinced him to support the project. In October of the same year, he signed a lease with Columbia University for a parcel of land in Midtown Manhattan. Unfortunately, infighting between members of the opera committee and the Stock Market Crash of 1929 led to the project’s demise, leaving Rockefeller with a long-term lease that cost him $3.3 million a year.